Hornworms and Loopers Question

Something's been eating my bell pepper leaves. Whatever it is doesn't strip the plant, but eats part of the leaves and then moves on. I've looked up and down, over and under the plants and can't find any suspects. I've found one looper on my beans, but not any others. This morning during my morning inspection of the garden, I found a baby tomato hornworm on one of my tomato plants. Thankfully, DH was near and removed the thing before he did any damage.

The question is do you think it's a hornworm eating my peppers or a looper? The poop left behind is pretty big, btw.

Stephanie,
We had the same problem as soon as we put out our pepper seedlings. I gave each plant a good spraying with insecticidal soap, followed up by a BT drench a week later. No damage since.
Insecticidal soap: 1 qt. water, 1 tblsp. soap (not detergent, I use Ivory bar soap), and 1 tsp. vegetable oil. Put in a spray bottle and shake well before use.
BT: bacillus Thurengensis (forgive spelling!) which you can get at an organic supplier. We use water with mosquito dunks in it, but we have been told this doesn't work on tomato worms, cabbage loopers, etc. Fortunately, our worms and loopers don't know that yet.

There are two types of bacillus thuringiensis. This one is for mosquitoes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis_israelensis

And this one is for caterpillars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis

Steph - it could be either one. Big poop means big worm in my experience, and both are very difficult to spot sometimes. Their poop all looks the same to me. I have the best luck searching at night with this little headlight that I have. Cracks my kids up - lol.

The bigger they get, the more they eat, so best to catch them when they are small. They are most likely small, thus only eating parts of the leaves. Be aware that where there is one it probably has friends close by.

Good luck.

Kelly

Edited to add - You call that a BABY hornworm? Looks pretty good size to me - lol. Looks like he may have wasp eggs on him as well? That's good as the wasps are parasitic and will kill the hornworm. Don't kill him. If you can, pull him off your plant (or cut the plant as I've had to do before) and put him somewhere away from your veggies and let the wasps do their thing. More wasps = more bad news for hornworms...

This message was edited Jun 9, 2009 10:48 AM

We did recently release some trichogramma wasps, but I think what you're seeing as wasps are his chompers. This guy was small compared to some I've seen in the past. We've already dismissed him to bad bug heaven and are on the lookout for others. We have a hand held black light that we'll use outside after dark since they (hornworms) glow in the dark. Tomorrow I'll go get some Bt as it's not something I already have in my arsenal. I do use the soap/water combo, but I use Murphy's oil soap and water. With my flowering plants, I add a smidge of ammonia to really kill off the aphids.

Steph - Nice chompers on that there wormy...

The Bt should help. I like the blacklight trick. Looking at their coloring I used to think those puppies would probably glow in the dark - lol.

Kelly